91st Assault Corps: The Battle of Coruscant (beta 1)

[Napseeker]

local link
http://www.swbfgamers.com/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=521


I'm pleased to announce that my Battle of Coruscant map will finally be released next week, just in time for "Day of SWBF".  This was originally supposed to be released summer of 2008 but as usual things got busy and this map has been long delayed until now.

I've ported this map to the best of my abilities, quite difficult given the lack of scripting support in SWBF1.  My goal was to make both a space battle and a ground battle enjoyable for single-player (hopefully multiplayer games will also be fun! You guys will have to tell me). If you've played Karnage's port of Battle of Coruscant, you know that it was unfinished and had some unfortunate issues with AI bots and gameplay - this version should fix most of those issues. More info to come during the week, but this map will have:

- pathing added (so the bots don't run around into walls any longer)
- new clones (the 91st Assault Corps are the grey-striped white clones from RotS)
- playable Anakin with a cool new weapon: R2D2 with flaming oil attack (see pic below)
- CIS droid pilot will have Buzz Droid Attack (ideal for disabling/destroying vehicles or drilling into the armor of clones)
- all the vehicles from the movie including all four styles of Jedi Starfighters































WARNING: You'll definitely need a fast computer with a good video card to play this...

UPDATE: And here's the official beta1 release:
http://rapidshare.com/files/300823308/91st_Assault_BofC_beta1.rar

BTW, the localization of the units is incorrect for map (2) but I forgot to mention that in the Known Bugs section of the readme.

[Rhino]

 

Awesome, Napseeker! Just what I wanted to play on SWBF As always, you are pure amazement incarnate! 

Really looking forward to playing this. 

[Hardcore]

/faints

[Breakdown]

 

/dies

Looks awesome as usual Napseeker, I can't WAIT!

[Master Zen]

 

...wow

[khy]

lulz hey napseeker chillz with all the beast mods.
Just kiddding can't wait to play this.

[Jedikiller]

Looks awesome, Nap! I look forward to playing it as soon as I can after release.

Let me know if you need space to upload it here or if you choose not to.

[Napseeker]

Looks awesome, Nap! I look forward to playing it as soon as I can after release.

Let me know if you need space to upload it here or if you choose not to.

Thanks guys, and JK I'll probably wait until the final version to upload onto MPCG. This really will be a beta that needs some beta testing first before I can call it finished - especially for multiplayer support. 

Also if anyone knows of a tutorial that explains how reinforcement bleeding works in SWBF1, please post a link.  I read through some of the LUA implementation for BF2's conquest mode and don't really think I understand exactly what's going on (I thought I did, but I'm wondering if there's more to it than I previously thought).  Obviously I want to establish that as you blow up parts of the enemy capital ship, they begin to bleed out reinforcements more and more rapidly...

[Breakdown]

Also if anyone knows of a tutorial that explains how reinforcement bleeding works in SWBF1, please post a link.  I read through some of the LUA implementation for BF2's conquest mode and don't really think I understand exactly what's going on (I thought I did, but I'm wondering if there's more to it than I previously thought).  Obviously I want to establish that as you blow up parts of the enemy capital ship, they begin to bleed out reinforcements more and more rapidly...

I think I can help you with that Napseeker, my memory needs to be refreshed a little, but I think I did the same thing fdor my Search and Destroy map

[Unit 33]

/ Brain ejects.

This looks fairly psychedelic, so uber-good, even with
my many words I have been left speechless.

[Xfire Keenmike aka cull]

this will be fun with friends.

[Commander Gree]

  Only One Word. Wicked

[Napseeker]

Guys, remember that this is a beta and I definitely want feedback on how to make this map more fun for beta2.  Here is some more information (which I will also post in the first post above):

- each side gets 9 fighters (e.g. REPs get 4 Jedi starfighters, 5 ARC-170s); in BF2 a single vehicle spawn can be told to spawn multiple copies of the same vehicle (after each one flies off); in BF1 no command exists so each spawn pad can only create 1 vehicle, so this is why in my ported map I had to CRAM as many fighters together onto the same landing pad! 

- the fighters respawn very fast after they are destroyed and the AI bots are told to jump in them even if in the middle of a ground fight... the goal here is to always keep the skies occupied with SOMEBODY for you to shoot at.   That said, I've noticed the AI is still somewhat dumb and easily crash into their own cruisers.  I'm not sure if there are hint nodes or something else I can use to keep them flying more intelligently.  I did put barriers around the cruisers so that all the AI flyers try to stay in that region of space between the two cruisers.

- COMPROMISE: since there are two separate battlefields (cruisers) on this map, the BF1 AI simply isn't smart enough to deploy enemy soldiers to the other cruiser when their units are getting killed off.  In order to maintain a constant "ground battle" on both cruisers what I've had to do is set up the CPs like this:  there is one CP on each ship, which is uncapturable. But you have an exact 50/50 chance of spawning on either cruiser.  This way, the AI bots are given a random chance at appearing on the cruiser where they may currently be losing to the other team. I've noticed that if I don't do this, then the game engine ends up spawning a team's units on whichever cruiser they are currently winning at (dying less on) and the end result is that each team ends up clustered on their own cruisers and the ground fighting completely stops.  Random spawning on either battlefield is the only way to circumvent this issue since BF1 has no scripting support that would allow me to force each cruiser to maintain an even balance of both team's units.  Even this tactic does not always work, but it's the only solution for BF1.  For human players, it may mean that sometimes you'll have to hop into a fighter and fly over to the other ship (if that's where you really wanted to spawn).

- on each cruiser, there is also an enemy destructible CP. The idea is that the ground battle occurs on each ship because the enemy team is trying to board your cruiser. So on the CIS hangar, you'll see two (fake) Republic Gunship CPs and on the REP hangar, you'll see a CIS Droid Gunship.  You can use your heavy weapons troopers to blow up the destructible CPs (but only temporarily, since they do respawn) and this will provide some momentary relief if you feel that you are being overrun by enemy forces.... (these CPs don't affect the reinforcement bleeding btw).

- there are "auto-firing" turrets on each cruiser; each cruiser is constantly bombarding the other ship with turret fire - if you are flying in this region (which I refer to as "the gauntlet") there will be turret fire criss-crossing your path all the time making for a nice bit of hazardous combat.  For some multiplayer fun, you may want to challenge other human flyers to stay within this region while the two of you duel... (turn off friendly fire and you can be shot down by cannon fire from your own friendly cruiser).

- the locals team consists of General Grievous and his bodyguards who can appear on both ships and attack the REPs.  Since they are tossing their staffs for a huge EMP burst/explosion on landing, they can also kill their own CIS units inadvertantly (so stay out of their way )

- to provide some additional motivation to REP players to fly into space and attack the CIS cruiser: if you destroy both the CIS cruiser bridge and life support ship parts, this will stop Grievous and his bodyguards from respawning once you've killed them. 

- I know not everyone likes Jedi or heroes, so this is how I plan on setting up beta1:
BoC (1), CW era: has playable Anakin, hero Obi-Wan, and hero Dooku; GG and bodyguards as locals
BoC (1), GWC era: only has 4 soldier types per team and no hero-type units (no Anakin, no Obi, no Dooku); there will still be GG and his bodyguards as locals however but again you can stop them from respawning by blowing up CIS ship parts

BoC (2), CW era: this is a mission map that I will try to gear towards multiplayers. I believe custom sides don't work on servers so this version only has the map and loads the standard sides.  There is no GG or bodyguard locals.
BoC (2), GCW era: no idea yet what this should be.  I'm open to suggestions...

What I will also consider doing is making two versions of my map.  One version will have a lot of fx and extra fleet objects to try to convey the sense of being in the middle of a big fleet fight. This would obviously be laggy for multiplayer, so I think I'd need to have a second map that has the fx and bonus stuff stripped out to keep framerates high.  I'll need opinions from people after playing beta1 about whether more needs to be stripped out or not.  I think BoC(1) will be the map that has the extra fx and fleet objects, and BoC(2) will be the stripped down map.

[Rhino]

[/faints]

[Jon415]

you could make the last gcw map a huge one with tons of reinfocements and 2 or 3 capitol ships per team-primarily for dogfights and ony spawn on your own ships...